Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Monday, August 25, 2008

So I saw Paris je t'aime a week or so ago and was mildly entertained by the quirky acting and directing -- but to be fair, I haven't been to Paris in over ten years and don't have much of a connection with the city's people and geography. The same producers, however, also put together a compilation of shorts for New York City (can you guess what it's called? you're right.) and I'm incredibly excited for the Natalie Portman/Scarlett Johansson/Mira Nair-directed vignettes. Also, the trailer features Regina Spektor and Feist, so, I'm sold.

Friday, August 15, 2008

I'm always amazed by people who can come up with photography projects as original as Todd Fosgren's bird binding project:

To create his paintings, John James Audubon shot birds and contorted their bodies into dramatic poses by wiring and pinning them onto boards. The quirky and flamboyant postures he used were not immediately popular with the scientific community, but today they are renowned.

It was Roger Tory Peterson who pioneered the idea of a field guide. His guides highlight observable marks, pointed out by carefully placed arrows, which allow for the identification of birds at a distance. Peterson painted thousands of systematic illustrations of birds in static poses based on photographs, bird skins, and field observations. Field guides have allowed hobbyists, artists, and scientists to identify birds with binoculars instead of a shotgun.

Ornithologists now use mist nets. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet. Then the bird is released.

I photographed these birds while they are caught in mist nets, moments before the ornithologist extracts them. Here, the birds inhabit a fascinating space between our framework of the bush and the hand. It is a fragile and embarrassing moment before they disappear back into the woods, and into data.